The KVUE Defenders investigation found hundreds of dental patients across Texas who have experienced unnecessary dental procedures.
Attorney Thomas Crosley of San Antonio is very familiar with the issue of dental upselling.
In 2011, the Crosley Law Firm began representing nearly 300 patients in a lawsuit against a chain of local dental offices claiming that dentists were performing unneeded dental work on their patients.
“They would work on as many teeth as possible whether the teeth needed the work or not,” said Crosley.
The lawsuit settled in 2015. Rose Wallace and her three children were among the hundreds of victims in the San Antonio lawsuit.
Wallace said it started a few years after taking them to a San Antonio dentist for a few fillings, but left with mouthful of silver. “I didn’t realize it was going to be that much work…and it was a lot of work.”
Wallace’s children continue to have surgeries to correct dental work that was originally unneeded.
While you might think that such a big case would put Texas dentists on notice and put a stop to unneeded upselling, the KVUE Defenders uncovered it’s still going on today.
Noah Deel, 15, and his mother said it happened to them earlier this year when a Houston-area dentist installed six crowns in his mouth for $6,000 and nearly extracted two teeth from her. A second opinion revealed none of it was necessary.
Dr. Gerald McDougal has been a dentist in Austin for 50 years. This past March, a patient asked him for second opinion after a different dentist told her she needed ten cavities filled for $1,700. According to McDougal, she needed no treatment at all.
“It's unfortunately somewhat prevalent in the profession for overtreatment to occur,” McDougal said. “The reality is that people, the public in general, simply do not know much about teeth.”
Kelly Parker has been the executive director of the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners since September 2015. Parker feels that this problem is probably not confined to Texas, but likely a nationwide issue.
Crosley blames the problem on a dental board he believes has known about the problem for years.
“It seemed to me that a lot of the complaints that we would make with the dental board would sort of go into a dark hole somewhere," Crosley said.
"It takes a long time to do an investigation. Not only do we owe it to the public to investigate it fully to make sure they’re protected and they were not wronged and we take care of the violators but we also owe it to the professional for due process reasons," said Parker.
In order to prevent this from happening to you, McDougal and other dentists recommend first and foremost that you look up your dentist’s history, receive a second opinion before you agree to have any work done, and be sure to file a complaint with the appropriate agency in order to prevent and protect this from happening to others.
Go here to file a complaint with the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners.
Go here to search for a licensed dentist in Texas.